


Vamp

by rispacooper



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Angst, Bathrooms, Boys in Skirts, Comment Fic, Crossdressing, First Kiss, First Time, M/M, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-02
Updated: 2012-04-02
Packaged: 2017-11-02 23:12:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/374421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rispacooper/pseuds/rispacooper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What Reid looks like while undercover might be more than Morgan can bear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vamp

**Author's Note:**

> We were discussing Reid-in-a-dress and I remarked that he would look pretty in 1920's clothes. This happened. A commentfic I forgot about it until today. Vague references to Morgan's history, which I am still not sure how to tag for here.

To tell the truth, Reid thought he looked ridiculous. 

No, that wasn't exactly correct. He looked good, he _knew_ he looked good. Prentiss and Garcia and JJ had spent a ludicrous amount of time making sure he looked good, and Reid knew that they wouldn't have let him go out anywhere, much less go out undercover, looking anything less than stunning. 

He also knew he had the features that had made him the perfect choice. Men in drag meant more than the comical images often seen in mainstream cinema and to a fetishist like the killer they'd been chasing, the ideal man in a dress was something far more specific than fake breasts and some lipstick. 

The technical names and distinctions, the subgroups within the drag community itself, meant nothing to a man like that. What he wanted, what he'd wanted before Morgan had slammed him into a wall and then dragged him away in handcuffs, was Reid. 

Or someone like Reid, Reid supposed. No wall of muscle and mass draped in soft fabrics to make it seem harmless, and no imitation of the female form beneath his clothes. He wanted a pretty boy in old-fashioned dress and Reid was that boy. 

Maybe that was the reason that Reid felt off now that the sting was over and the unsub was no longer a threat. No other experienced agents could have done what he'd done, but few would have offered themselves either. He was surprised at Rossi's silence on the subject, though not at the faint, encouraging smile he'd first seen from Hotch. He'd expected that the way he'd expected Morgan to make a joke and then turn away, which was exactly what had happened. 

He simply hadn't thought about _after_. After the unsub was caught and Reid was standing alone in the cold night air in wispy, hanging silk, his short curls pinned up around his face to frame it and remind everyone of its delicacy, his lips messily stained and his eyelids brushed a smoky gray. 

After, when brusque alpha males and no nonsense field agents were circling around him and he was still this... boy in a dress... this still, shivering figure from the Roaring Twenties watching Morgan's jaw tighten as Morgan did everything but look at him. 

It wasn't the dress itself making Reid feel ridiculous.

It had been Hotch who had offered him his jacket after a while, though only Hotch had been wearing a jacket so Reid tried not to take it too personally that the others hadn't noticed how cold it was. Maybe they didn't feel it. Hotch certainly hadn't seemed to on the drive back. But he hadn't spoken either, other than a short "well done" and an instruction for Reid to talk to him if he needed to. 

Even the air back at Quantico seemed colder, the place mostly empty of agents due to the lateness of the hour. Reid was grateful. He was the odd man out often enough without adding hair and makeup and a dress into the equation. There wasn't even a sign of Morgan or Emily, who had both gone with the local police to book the unsub and transfer custody. 

It was just as well, he told himself after leaving the jacket on his desk for Hotch to find. This dress had no place in halls built for J. Edgar Hoover's men, whatever the popular rumors might suggest otherwise. Reid grabbed his bag and headed for the mens room, bypassing the bullpen and Garcia's office. 

He stopped at his reflection, once again taken aback by the weakness that his costume only highlighted. He acknowledged, though with some mental distance, that it was that weakness that he had used to catch a killer. Exploiting the seeming-vulnerability of his pale skin and the thin bone structure for a higher purpose was not weakness at all, then. He should see strength in the shadows under his cheekbones and in the smudged swell of his lips. And the hollows at his throat, where Prentiss had hung antique, heavy, pearl drop earrings, where Reid could see his pulse fluttering, should be seen as the weapons that they were. 

He hadn't needed a gun. He'd had his face and the unsub's profile. But that wasn't how others had seen it. _One_ other. 

"Derek." He rarely used the first name. Whatever it is between them--whatever it is that Morgan felt anyway, because Reid had known for years what _he_ felt--wouldn't let him use that name often. But he said it when he looked over and saw Morgan in the mirror.

Maybe it was because Morgan--Supervisory Special Agent Morgan--was practically fearless but Derek, Derek was someone else. 

The promise to never profile each other had never really held. It couldn't have, not with this group, but Reid had always taken it to mean _never profile each other out loud_. And with Morgan, with Derek, he hadn't been able to stop himself anyway. After Chicago and meeting Derek’s family, knowing his past, it had all made sense. 

But it remained confusing, because _Morgan_ confronted that which frightened him. The Derek who teased Reid for being pretty and looked upon himself as Reid's personal protector did not. Derek saw his role as that of a pure knight or perhaps a eunuch bodyguard, anything but what it actually was; Reid had taken a painfully long time to learn that lesson and he wasn't about to forget it now. He thought about all the times he'd responded to what his pathetic experience and limited instincts had told him were flirting only to watch Derek back away. He let the pain stiffen his spine.

When he lifted his chin he felt the earrings swing and brush his skin. The glancing touch made him shiver, but so did the way Derek looked up, too fast, as if trying to hide how he'd watched that tremor work through Reid's body. 

"Derek," Reid said again, not bothering to keep the frustration and anger out of his tone because he saw no point. He might be in a dress, but he wasn't the one hiding. Derek looked at his mouth. 

There were several expressions flickering across Derek's face, some little more than micro expressions, and in the moments before he turned his head he had to know that Reid would see and identify all of them. He knew exactly what Reid was capable of. 

Reid thought of his mouth. He thought of the jokes Derek--Morgan--should have been making, the distance he should have been putting between them unless he felt that Reid needed comforting, and he thought of the unsub, running a finger down his neck before following it with his mouth and whispering how easy it would be to restrain someone as delicate as Reid. Then he thought of his mouth, crimson and smeared, and the vamp's dark powder at his eyelids. 

He arched his throat to put his head back and waited. 

"Reid." Never Spencer, not ever unless Morgan felt it was needed. Reid had often wondered if Derek did it to maintain this distance he kept between them or if it was just habit to use his last name. It didn't matter now. Derek was practically shaking as he tried to hold back what it was he wanted to say and even having a good idea about what it might be--concerned questions about Reid's mental well-being, a joke about the dress, an admonition for Reid not to put himself in danger again--Reid was still startled by what burst out of Derek's mouth. 

"Pretty boy. You look--" Derek bit back his own words, too late, and closed his eyes. Fluorescent lights were the only things in the world that didn't flatter Morgan, they gave him tired shadows, made him seem smaller and unsteady. Reid's mouth went dry. 

"How do I look?" he asked as quietly as he could. But he knew, he knew he looked good, and so did Derek, who opened his eyes.

"That guy... " Derek nearly dodged the question but though he swallowed he couldn't seem to help himself. "The unsub he..."

"He touched me," Reid answered back, with remarkable calm if he considered the way he was trembling and hot all over, the flush he could feel trickling under his skin. He lifted a hand, exposed one wrist, delicate and pale and hardly marked at all by the handcuffs used on him. "Here." He touched his mouth too. "And here." He had to take a moment after that, but his shudder was nothing to how Derek reacted, clenching his hands and scowling with frustrated aggression. 

"The question is..." Reid couldn't believe himself, swathed in thin cloth, without his gun, but his every word was drawing Derek closer. But he wanted Derek more than he wanted Morgan and dressed like this, as this pretty boy in a dress, he had the kind of fragile beauty that Derek needed to save. "The question is what are you going to do about it?"

His answer was Derek pushing forward until he had Reid's back to the row of sinks and Derek's arms hot on either side of him. They weren't touching, not really, not in any way that Reid could consider it _really_ touching, but they were close enough for him to feel Derek's heart thundering in his chest and for Derek's every fast, frightened breath to flow over his neck. 

He didn't move. He couldn't anyway but he didn't. Not to put a hand to Derek's shoulder or to his chest. Not even to steady himself against the counter. He only raised his head, listening to Derek breath open-mouthed against his throat and waiting for whatever Derek decided to do. 

This was something he had to do on his own, or so Gideon had once hinted in a way that Reid hadn't figured out until years later. Derek had to do this. But Reid wanted to help and swallowed again, deliberately this time, so Derek would see it, or feel it.

"He touched me there too," he spoke quietly but defiantly, and then shut his eyes at the faint press of Derek's lips there at his neck under the pearl drop earring, where the unsub had dared to touch him. 

He had his answer. He would have praised any number of possible deities for it if he could have said a single word. 

Derek's mouth opened, though the kiss didn't increase in pressure. He tilted his head, following the same path as the unsub's finger as though his eyes had taken that same path as it had been happening and when he reached Reid's collarbone he exhaled. 

Reid brought his hand back up and struggled to catch his breath as Derek took the offered wrist in one hand and raised that to his mouth too. "Pretty boy," was all he said, but it was all he needed. 

Reid shivered and leaned back, not wanting anything else but that until Derek finally, finally put his other hand to his waist to take a handful of wispy satin and lift it up. He was shaking, but so was Reid. Derek might fall to the floor, go down on his knees, though Reid wasn't sure. Suddenly for all his training and intelligence he wasn't sure of anything except that when Derek, _Derek_ finally looked at him, he didn't think Reid looked ridiculous. 

He didn't think that at all.


End file.
